The Coaching Industry and the School: Parallel Systems and What They Reveal About the Official One

The Coaching Industry and the School: What Its Growth Actually Signals

A contributing voice from child development | Specialist in education equity, school improvement, and teacher professional development

India has one of the world’s largest private coaching industries, and its growth is a specific, measurable symptom rather than a vague cultural trend: a government survey found a third of Indian school students now take private coaching, with household spending on it rising steeply from grade to grade. Understanding this honestly means recognising two things at once — that coaching’s growth reflects real, documented gaps in what schools and families believe formal education is providing, and that the coaching market itself is disproportionately accessed by families who can already afford it, meaning its growth may be widening exactly the inequality it claims to help students overcome.

Key facts

• A government Comprehensive Modular Survey (CMS) by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation found that 33% of school students in India take private coaching outside regular school hours.
• Coaching expenditure rises sharply with grade level: from roughly ₹525 annually for pre-primary students to as much as ₹6,384 annually for higher secondary students — and 95% of this spending comes from household resources, with only 1.2% of students benefiting from government scholarships.
• India’s coaching institute industry was valued at approximately USD 7.2 billion in 2025, projected to reach USD 17.8 billion by 2034 — a sustained, rapidly growing market rather than a marginal phenomenon.
• NEP 2020 explicitly names “coaching culture” as a problem and proposes reforming assessment design specifically to reduce dependence on it — a rare instance of a national policy naming this issue directly rather than treating it as outside the school system’s concern.
• The Ministry of Education’s Guidelines for Regulation of Coaching Centres, 2024 — which ban enrolling students under 16, prohibit rank or marks guarantees, require tutors to hold at least a graduate qualification, and mandate counselling support — were introduced partly in response to national concern over coaching-related student wellbeing, including reported student suicides at coaching hubs; several states, including Rajasthan, have since passed their own regulatory legislation.
• Research using NSSO’s 75th round survey data found that access to shadow education (private coaching) is highly selective, delivered largely to students from socially and economically well-off families — meaning coaching’s benefits are not evenly available even to the students who might need academic support most.

The growth is a symptom worth reading precisely, not just acknowledging

A third of Indian students taking coaching is not simply evidence that schools are failing. It is evidence of what families believe schools and coaching each specifically provide — and the fact that access to that belief is itself unequal is the part of the story easiest to miss when coaching gets discussed only as an exam-prep phenomenon.

This is the honest, precise version of “the coaching industry is a symptom.” Reading it that way changes what it implies for a school. If coaching were evenly accessible, its growth would mainly indicate a gap in instructional quality that any given school could address directly. Because coaching access is concentrated among better-off families, per the NSSO-based research, its growth signals something more specific: an emerging, informally-funded parallel system that reinforces rather than corrects the inequities already present in the formal one — which is precisely the equity concern this piece and the original essay are trying to name.

Five principles for engaging with what coaching actually signals

1. Diagnose specifically what your students’ coaching use is compensating for. A content gap, an assessment-preparation gap, and a confidence gap each point to a different school-level response — a school treating all coaching demand as one undifferentiated signal will likely address the wrong one.
2. Treat trust in the classroom relationship as the resource asymmetry coaching often reveals. Families turning to coaching frequently cite a felt gap in individual attention or confidence in the school-level relationship — rebuilding that trust is a relationship problem underlying the academic one, not separate from it.
3. Pursue the structural fix NEP 2020 itself points to — assessment design — as a long-run complement to daily instructional consistency. Coaching demand is driven substantially by high-stakes exam design; a school’s own sustained instructional quality is the credible day-to-day substitute while that structural reform plays out over years.
4. Recognise that coaching access is itself an equity issue, not just an academic one. Since shadow education disproportionately reaches better-off families, schools serving marginalised communities have a direct stake in closing the instructional gap themselves, rather than assuming coaching is an equally available option for all their students.
5. Start by finding out specifically why your own students use — or don’t use — coaching. A brief, honest survey of your own school community will surface the locally specific gap driving coaching demand, rather than relying on the national narrative alone.

Frequently asked questions

How big is India’s private coaching industry, in concrete terms? Substantial and growing: a government survey found a third of school students take private coaching, the market was valued at roughly USD 7.2 billion in 2025, and it’s projected to nearly triple by 2034.

Is coaching demand rising mainly because schools are failing, or are there other drivers? Both matter, and neither alone is the full picture: high-stakes exam design (which NEP 2020 explicitly targets for reform), household aspiration, and genuine gaps in individual attention or confidence at school all contribute — treating it as a single-cause problem misses the specificity the evidence supports.

What is the government doing to regulate coaching, and why now? The Ministry of Education’s 2024 guidelines — banning enrollment under 16, prohibiting rank guarantees, requiring qualified tutors, and mandating counselling support — followed national concern over coaching-related student wellbeing, and several states have since introduced their own regulatory bills.

Does coaching worsen educational inequality, or does it help disadvantaged students catch up? The available evidence points toward worsening: research using national survey data found coaching access is highly selective and concentrated among socially and economically better-off families, meaning its growth may reinforce existing gaps rather than closing them for the students who need support most.

What to do:

1. Survey your own students — briefly and honestly — on whether and why they use private coaching, to find the specific local gap rather than assuming the national pattern applies unchanged.
2. Speak with one colleague managing this well, and ask specifically what they’ve changed about classroom trust or instruction in response to what they learned from students.
3. Read NEP 2020’s specific language on coaching and assessment reform, or the Ministry of Education’s 2024 coaching regulation guidelines, and share one specific finding with your headmaster this week.
4. Propose one concrete, specific change to classroom practice targeting the actual gap you identified — content, confidence, or exam-preparation — rather than a general “improve teaching” resolution.
5. Set a review date four weeks out to check whether the change affected how students describe their reliance on coaching, and write it down today.

Sources: Comprehensive Modular Survey (CMS), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, via SPMI IAS Academy; India Coaching Institutes Industry report, IMARC Group (2025); National Education Policy 2020; Ministry of Education, Guidelines for Regulation of Coaching Centre, 2024, and related state legislation reporting (Careers360); “Who all access private coaching in higher education and how much do they spend? Evidence from India,” Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy; Economic and Political Weekly, “Regulating Coaching Centres” (2025).

This piece references coaching-related student wellbeing concerns as part of the factual basis for national regulatory action; if this topic affects you or a student personally, Tele-MANAS (14416 or 1800-891-4416) is India’s free, 24/7 national mental health helpline.